An excerpt from Letters to the Universe. This essay was written two years ago. It was humbling to start all over when I thought I had my shit together. Now here we are two years later, two books later, two years clean. Stronger than ever. Time is a river . . . Momentum.
Divine Intervention Part Two
โThe plains of desolation are white with the bones of countless millions who, at the very dawn of victory, sat down to wait . . . and while waiting, died.โ
Who penned this powerful adage on the importance of perseverance, on striking while the proverbial iron is hot, on resisting the temptation to rest on oneโs laurels?
I forget the dudeโs name. Shonda googled it for me recently but between the head injuries, the dope smoke, and standard mid-life brain recalibration, itโs getting more and more difficult to remember random trivia. The author of the quote is immaterial anyway, at least as he relates to the subject matter of this essay. In my mind it is eminent domain of my father, dead thirty years this coming September. Heโs the only person Iโve ever heard recite it. I consider it one of Dadโs greatest hits, right up there with โThe Ballad of Samuel Hall,โ Bobby Goldsboroโs โHoneyโ (โSee the tree, how big itโs grown?โ), random lines from Birdman of Alcatraz, and timeworn maxims like โWhen you lose your temper, you loseโ and โIf you fail to plan, then plan to fail.โ
I can see him now, brow furrowed in contemplation, eyes finding mine in the rearview of our old brown Buick as endless rows of pine trees tick away outside the window, morphing into the familiar rivers and pastures and lonely county road overpasses on the stretch of I-10 between Mobile and Tallahassee.
โThe plains of desolation are white with the bones of countless millions . . .โ
What did it all mean? My seven-year-old brain could not grasp the concept. Perhaps neither of us did. But it sounded cool. And Dadโs tone and delivery lent a certain profundity to the phrase, earmarking it as important.
Turns out it was.
I sat down to write my first novel at age 37, a little over 18 years after the prison chaplain at Lake Butler summoned me to his office to notify me that my father had passed. Eighteen years . . . It went by in a blink. Or maybe blur is a more accurate word. Back then, my fellow prisoners were always pontificating about the heightened sense of awareness that is a byproduct of doing time, and how it makes navigating life outside the razor wire a cinch. Theoretically, multiple years of staying on oneโs toes and sleeping with one eye open was supposed to give a man a decided advantage over those somnambulant suckers out there slogging away on autopilot. Not so, in my experience. During my brief vacation of freedom, just after the turn of the century, that mean olโ world chewed me up and spit me out quicker than you can say 10-20-Life. I got hooked on crack cocaine, crashed three different cars, endured brain surgery, received 70 staples in my head, was mauled by police canines, indicted by the federal government, and tossed back in the Escambia County Jail before I could even get my bearings.
My return to the joint was a homecoming of sorts. After spending most of my youth in institutions, the prison landscape was more familiar to me than the free world, the characters more predictable. I picked up right where I left offโgetting high, playing cards, working out, gambling on football. Clichรฉ prison shit. Years passed. But with them came a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction with the life I was living, with the man I had become. Similar to Izzy in On the Shoulders of Giants, I had grown sick of the yard with its dope and its gangs and its parlay tickets. I longed for something different, an identity other than failure-loser-career criminal. So, in 2011, I turned inward and lost myself in imagination and memory. What came out was Consider the Dragonfly.
Although the novel is a work of fiction, the family it is centered around closely resembles my own. This is especially true for the character of Chris McCallister who is Mac Collins note for note. From the messiah complex to the courtroom speech to the congestive heart failure at age 51. If you ever want to meet my father, his ghost still wanders the pages of that first bookโsmoking pot in Tampax wrappers and two-liter Pepsi bongs, having conversations with Peter Jennings through the television screen, blessing shoppers in a South Miami Publix. A grown child battling demons, a lost soul stumbling toward the light.
Despite this honest and, at times, unflattering characterization, I think Dad wouldโve loved the book. I think he wouldโve loved all of them. From Dragonfly to Giants to Entanglement and all points in between. He wouldโve dug these essays too. Not necessarily for any riveting plot lines or liquid prose but for the achievements themselves. For the work. I know he wouldโve been proud of the letter from President Obama, the Writerโs Digest book award, and the article in the Pensacola News Journal.
My father was a lifelong fan of discipline and mastery. This may sound odd considering that he spent much of his adult life north of 300 pounds, smoked two packs of Camel non-filters a day, had a brutally low self-esteem, gambled recklessly, bought dope with grocery money, and was in every way about as undisciplined as a man could be. But maybe that was the point. Since self-discipline felt so unattainable to him, he coveted it the way others covet beauty or wealth or 4.3 speed.
His nightstand was usually littered with books by men like Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, and Dr. Wayne Dyer. Masterworks on conquering the self, setting and exceeding personal goals, winning friends and influencing people . . . Iโm certain the quote was lifted from the pages of one of these best-sellers. I can imagine him committing it to memory, repeating it over and over with all the desperation and fervor of a religious fanatic.
โThe plains of desolation are white with the bones . . .โ
This essay was supposed to have been written in October. At the checkered flag of my final year in state prison. It was supposed to be about finishing strong and doubling down on all the things that changed my life over the course of this decades-long journey. Unfortunately, I took my eyes off the road and ended up in a ditch.
If you read my last essay, TICKETMAN, then you know that I recently decided to let the old meโa lost soul who went by the name of CCโout of solitary confinement. Just to run Bond Money, my old football ticket. And perhaps participate in a little well-earned debauchery with some of my homeboys, many of whom Iโll never see again once I walk out the gate. No harm in that, right? I can be moderate. Itโs not like I havenโt enjoyed a joint here and there over the last couple years, or drank a little buck. These things are part of the prison experience. How could I continue to write convincingly about this world that Iโll be leaving soon if I didnโt fully immerse myself in the culture from time to time? Consider it gonzo journalism.
Yeah, bad move, Hunter S. Thompson.
This delusional pursuit of moderation quickly devolved into nights burning stick after stick of a new and unfamiliar drug in a cell full of strangers, smoke-stained fingers singed and cracked from holding Brillo wire to batteries in order to light yet another, groping blindly on the floor in the dark for any dope I might have dropped during the day. Me, the great Malcolm Ivey, award-winning author of six novels, acclaimed essayist, beacon of mastery, spouter of platitudes, ejaculator of self-help advice . . . crawling around on the floor like a damned crackhead. Again. That was the scariest partโmy response to this strange 2022 substance mirrored my response to crack cocaine in 2004, the drug that cost me 20 years in prison and almost cost me my life.
In the span of a few short weeks, I found myself staring into the abyss. Every inch of ground I had gained over the last 12 years was suddenly crumbling beneath my feet. Dark clouds were gathering. Vultures circled overhead. Yet night after night as I lay in my bunk coming downโheart pounding, sweat pouring, the stench of failure all over meโa staticky and persistent voice kept repeating in my head like an AM radio broadcast circa 1981.
โThe plains of desolation are white with the bones of countless millions who, at the very dawn of victory, sat down to wait . . . and while waiting, died.โ
Dad. Those eyes in the rearview, clear as the morning sky. A seven-year-old boy in the back seat of a Buick. Interesting how the above quote could have so little impact 40 years ago but could prove to be so relevant in 2022. Those words saved my life.
Possibly. Or perhaps this essay is a romantic oversimplification of my own near-death and bounce-back. After all, there were a myriad of reasons to get up off the mat: a solitary girl, some little people who need strength and stability in their lives, a mom pushing 80 whoโs spent the last 30 years in prison visitation parks, my time-barred brothers and sisters who are counting on me in the long fight for a parole mechanism in the state of Florida, books to write, a world to see . . .
Still, thereโs something about that quote; how it got lodged in my head like a splinter and refused to come out, how it played over and over like one of Dadโs old Everly Brothers 45s on the family RCA. Out of nowhere and at just the right time. The starry-eyed writer in me prefers the mystical explanation; that my fatherโor the combination of my father and a force more loving, more powerful, and more intelligent than my father could ever hope to beโstashed a life raft on Interstate 10 all those years ago. And that proved to be the difference. As Jason Isbell sings in โNew South Walesโ: โGod bless the busted boat that brings us back.โ
Either way, the whole experience was enough to make me take my ass to church, a place I havenโt been in a quarter-century. If for nothing else than just to change up the energy and escape the hopelessness of my unit for an hour. Iโve been attending for a month now. But thatโs another essay.
โDecember 2022
Malcolm Ivey / Author 